Design Installation - Mitte, Berlin

The last couple of weeks I worked on a design installation at a new Japanese restaurant in Mitte due to open in December. The installation consists of 15, 000 suspended chopsticks hanging from the ceiling creating a kinetic topography. The work is constructed by threading fishing line through a series of canvases (100cm x 100cm) on which a grid is created and the surface is pierced. Fishing line is secured on the back of the canvas with a bead. The canvas is then suspended with the surface parallel to the floor and the chopsticks are measured and tied, all by hand, creating a wave pattern that will be formed once all of the canvases have been suspended.

Below are some shots of the work in progress – I will post photos of the entire install once it has been completed. The work is by two American designers who are based in Berlin, I'll post more about them at a later date also!

Prefix Exhibition - Western Australia and Hyogo Exchange

I have a sculpture in an exhibition called Prefix organised by the Textiles Exchange Project (http://www.textileexchangeproject.org) in Perth, Western Australia. The exhibition brings together 40 artists from Perth and Hyogo in Japan whose practice engages with fibre textile materials and processes. The exhibition traveled to Japan in August this and was presented at the Hyogo Prefectural  Museum of Art Japan (http://www.artm.pref.hyogo.jp/eng/home.html) and is now currently on display at the Western Australian Museum - Perth until February 2012.  

Download a copy of the catalogue here:

http://www.textileexchangeproject.org/re_a_prefix_catalogue.pdf

The below images are from the installation at the Museum in Japan, courtesy of Anne Farren from the Textiles Exchange Project.

Below is the work I contributed to the exhibition.

Matrix Blossom I 2011

25 x 25 x 30cm

Powder coated aluminium, spray-paint

Photographer: Elizabeth Delfs

Studio Update - Early September

I am just finishing a work for one of my shows next year. For the past 18 months I have been working on a series of sculptures under the title Revolutions, part of my ongoing investigations of the nexus between architecture, dress and body theories. It’s a process whereby I turn simple 2D shapes into complex 3D outcomes. I take a shape which I cut repeatedly and connect together to create an object that expands and contracts. Working from the foundation of pattern and dress making, these sculptures are built to either be installed on the wall and floor, or more often hovering in space. In their passive state the works are flat objects and when hung extend into active 3D outcomes which vary in form and size depending on installation. Each work is non-orientable which confronts the ergonomics of the human body that I describe as organic infrastructures, with equal parts rhythm and chaos. I use stencils and spray paint to create colour and surface designs which evoke movement and changing mass. To see previous works from this series check out my website here http://www.elizabethdelfs.com/gallery_12.html and the catalogue from the exhibition here http://www.elizabethdelfs.com/pdf/rev_cat.pdf

 Piecing together the order - these works usually have between 30 and 50 pieces to them.

Two halves........

 ....make a whole.

MICA MOCA Project Space - Berlin

Finally August has come to an end which is good news for me as during the month of August most Berliners take their holidays, leaving the Berlin art scene a little impotent. I have ventured on a few occasions in the last few weeks to galleries only to find the place closed, looking fairly empty and desolate. But I have since found out that everyone is just on holidays! However holidays are over and now to look forward to a series of openings and exciting projects.

This evening I went to the opening of an exhibition called The End of The Dream (Comes Too Soon) at project space MICA MOCA (http://micamoca.com/wordpress/) in Wedding; a low socio-economic borough of Mitte in Berlin; where all vibrant art communities start. And then eventually get pushed out! This show is the last for MICA MOCA in this location as the factory is being turned into loft apartments; however I understand that they will be looking for new premises.

With over 35 artists The End of The Dream (Comes Too Soon) consisted of works by some of the artists who held studios within the premises and then some whom did not, and there was a mix of photography, sculpture, installation and video.

The highlight of the show was a collaborative project by Anton Burdakov and Sophia Pompery. I first saw Anton's work on the PROGRAM Berlin website where had made a project with an architect for the gallery space. The installation at MICA MOCA consisted of a series of relatively simple make shift shelving structures with large glass jars (about 1 litre to 2 litres each) filled with black tea positioned on the shelves. These were placed at various different heights each with a corresponding projector positioned at a short distance that projected an image which was subsequently “drawn” in the tea. From one angle the glass jars appeared to have blurred shafts of light projected through them, then as you moved around the object an image appeared clearly within the jar. An extension of his TEA (http://www.antonburdakov.com/projects/09T/01.html) series this work was by far the most resolved using the binary of technology versus the quotidian, and was the most elegantly executed within the exhibition. He’s pretty ace really. Shame about my crap photography but you can sort of see the computer in the jar.

First few weeks in the studio